For decades, one of my least favourite disconnects has been between what it takes to be a good presidential candidate and what it takes to be a good president. The Venn diagram for these two pursuits involves little crossover, sadly.
To be a good/effective/successful candidate for US president in the 21st century, you have to be good at many things that have almost nothing to do with the job. First among these is not answering questions, especially substantive ones, because taking substantive stances risks antagonising those who stand on the other side and provides a record you might have to defend should it become politically expedient to change your stance.
Instead, good candidates manage to craft elements of their standard stump speeches into non-answers for virtually any question, and on those rare occasions when no fragment fits, just ignore the question and parrot a tried-and-true talking point instead.
To be a good candidate, you have to run hard to the fringe of your electoral base to win primaries and delegates, then tack back to the centre once you’ve secured your party’s nomination to pick up those crucial moderates, independents and undecideds, though how anyone could still be undecided with Trump-Biden II looming is well beyond my powers of understanding.
(Trump, as always, is an exception to this and virtually all other norms, preferring to hurl raw meat to his base and say the crazy, dangerous stuff that feeds his super-sized ego.)
But to be a good president you must make firm and sometimes unpopular decisions ‒ acts fatal to a candidate. To be a successful candidate, you must almost never make verbal or other “gaffes”, like Obama, or make so many so often, like Trump, it’s impossible for the voters to remember any single one so you get away with all of them.
I can think of three terrible candidates this century who would have been terrific presidents, all of them undone by their perceived lack of charisma and a poorly timed gaffe or photo op. Hillary Clinton had a shrill speaking voice, said half of Trump’s supporters were “deplorables”, was hung out to dry over her private email server by FBI director James Comey two weeks before the election and still won the popular vote by three million. She was arguably the most qualified person ever to run for president and likely would have been excellent in the job.
John Kerry was stiff and patrician but he volunteered for incredibly hazardous duty in the Vietnam War, unlike his 2004 opponent, George W Bush, who avoided Vietnam by using his family connections to get into the National Guard.
Somehow, Kerry’s military service was used against him during the campaign. Kerry also got dinged for having the temerity to enjoy windsurfing, which apparently is an elitist activity that rendered him fatally out of touch with common folk, even though he spent his entire adult life in public service and likely would have been a fine president.
Al Gore was 15 years ahead of almost everyone else on the dangers of climate change but he was too preternaturally stiff and monotonal to be popular.
Biden was a bad candidate but won because Trump was worse, and has been one of the most productive presidents of my lifetime. He gets almost no credit for it, but legislation passed on his watch will make millions of lives better for generations. Trump talked about infrastructure ad nauseam but Biden got a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed into law. Biden has signed into law serious, beneficial legislation on everything from climate change and fair housing to microchip production and student loan debt. But highlighting his age and tendency to misspeak gets higher ratings, so that’s what Americans see. Now, all anyone wants to talk about is how he mixed up Egypt and Mexico. Yeah, that’s how we should choose our leaders.
